Heavy rain event’ likely for South Florida, Weather Service says

Wednesday

Forecast models continue to battle it out over the path and strength of next week’s projected low in the Gulf of Mexico, but one thing is fairly clear — South Florida’s dry spell will likely be coming to an abrupt end.

"Model consensus indicates a likely heavy rain event for South Florida," forecasters at the National Weather Service in Miami said in their Thursday morning discussion.

They put rain chances at 60 percent in Palm Beach from Monday through Wednesday. They are also predicting breezy to windy conditions.

Both AccuWeather and Weather Underground are calling for about 2 inches of rain early to mid-week, but NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center suggests that between 3-4 inches could hammer the Southeast Florida Coast with up to 6 inches on the West Coast from Tampa down to Naples.

As for tropical development, the National Hurricane Center today upped chances a tropical depression — or Tropical Storm Colin — developing off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula by Tuesday. Forecasters are predicting that it will move north-northeast.

The Florida peninsula looks to be a likely target for the system, but forecast models are all over the board when it comes to intensity. The Navy model (NAVGEM), which hasn’t done much with it all week, came out today with a forecast for a strong storm spinning up from the Caribbean on Tuesday, brushing the western tip of Cuba, and then barelling into South Florida on Wednesday.

The European (ECMWF) and GFS propose a much weaker system coming ashore north of Tampa around mid-week. The Canadian model (CMC) has a vigorous storm hitting Tampa.

Meanwhile, it turns out that reports of the death of Tropical Storm Bonnie were greatly exaggerated.

After several days of spinning of North Carlina’s coast as a post-tropical remnant low, ex-Bonnie began pulling itself back together, and the NHC will resume advisories on Tropical Depression Bonnie at 11 a.m.

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RECORD WATCH: Vero Beach’s 17.98 inches of rain in May was the wettest on record, the National Weather Service in Melbourne said. It was 14.62 inches above normal and broke the previous record of 12.06 inches set in 1979.

Vero’s 22.44 inches for the spring season — running March 1-May 31 — made it the second-wettest spring on record. It was just short of the 23.72 inches recorded in 1982.